I had 10 years of performing arts under my belt before I became an IT pro back in 2000. I even was quite good at it. I've been programming for 22 years but had a decade of Art inbetween. It's a great experience, and while it doesn't pay the bills as easy as IT, and I'm a little behind in hardcore coding compared to other Über-Geeks of my generation, it provides an skillset that I wouldn't want to miss. Artist are nice people and the performers have superiour social skills (good and bad:-) ) due to them clashing their egos on a daily basis. The Arts School wont be half as boring than a pure tech campus, I can tell you that. Plus artists and tech-nerds actually have a lot in common.
Oh, and the girls are cute.:-)
Go for the campus leaning towards arts, but *do* see to it that you get internships and sidejobs that involve you requireing to dive into whatever field of IT you want to make your income in later in your life. Occasions for that might even be more numerous than a tech-oriented campus.
I still consider the ultimate classic 'P-P-P-Powerbook' to be the prime example of creative internet community vigilantisim. Allways a funny read indeed.
The Asus EEE in book has a Killer Combination of features I've last seen about 13 years ago with the Highscreen "DOS 5.0 / Works 5.0 on ROM" Pocket PC (which basically was a cheap rebranding of an earlyer expensive Sharp Pocket PC). These features are: + Small. + Durable. + Full PC - runs all PC stuff I need. + Sacrafices Optical for durability, size and price == good move - I don't want to watch DVDs on a small thing like that anyway. I *do* however, want to use OpenOffice in a pinch. + No extra custom gadget connectivity stuff needed. Supports all standard ports out of the box. Means: Ready for universal flexible use. Cheap. + No obscure custom purpose 'Pocket OS'. Linux beats Palm OS any time of the day. + Linux preinstalled, Debian Variant being a big bonus. I'm a programmer and an IT pro. I want to use a Computer, not a pimped out virii-ridden slowpocking typewriter that needs DirectX to render it's desktop.
Now only if I could get one. These things are hard to come by right now.
The CCC is one of the things I like about Germany. It highlights a major element of german-style citizen-culture. It's clearly opposed to uncontrolled gouverment and any notion of a police-state. It has a taste of anarchy to it and on its fringes it has inofficial members with ties to the black-hat community. Yet it is a well organised official registered German association that speaks up on behalf of the people and democracy. With a 27-year tradition of keeping the public political debate alive on IT related rights-issues by perpetually coming up with creative ways of gaining attention. This recent 'Schäuble-Fingerprint' stunt being one of them. I don't know if they've exposed their selves with legal liability by doing this (after all it was officially published in their magazine 'Datenschleuder') but it sure is as funny, hilarious and exposing as ever. Creative non-sense at its best. Go, CCC!
I don't hate MS per se. I hate their monopoly and all that comes with it. For instance: End users, customers and partners following every wim of MS blindly.
That is a big fault and it needs to be attacked perpetually at all times with as much force as possible until the monopoly falters. Until then MS is our prime target. I don't trust Apple (or any other corp) any further than MS, but Apple doesn't have a monopoly and thus are forced to act smart and resonable at times. Which actually caused Apple to choose a Unix variant as their OS. That combined with the neat hard- & software integration is what made me an Apple customer with that G4 iBook and my recent purchase of the 'smaller' MacMini (both cheapest of it's class, regardless being an Apple).
If Apple as much as twitches in the wrong direction and attempts to lock me in I'll gladly be back to regular Linux on a regulare PC, Laptop (or my MacMini). As with all other opinion-leaders and experts in the industry I've been in the business to long to be paranoid enough about lock-in and greedy IT corps. As far as I can tell it's the same with most professionals I deal with.
WildTangent actually gained some attention back in 2001, when the offered a web 3D plugin and a dev-enviroment that didn't cost a bazillion dollars. They let their heels drag, only kept offering their plattform for Windows and basically ignored any opinion-leaders in multimedia or VM-based gaming & 3D. WildTangent today is next to insignificant and their 'Orb' VM console (which afaict only runs on MS OSes) is nothing but a pimped WildTangent Plugin/Player and won't gain any traction beyond some niche group who wants to play a console game on the PC. For whatever reasons there may be.
My Senior in the last company I worked for is around about 55 right now. He's one of the best programmers I've every worked with. Humorous, patient, respectfull to me (ca. 15 years younger, his subordinate), allways helpfull and an absolute wizbang when it comes to picking up new technology. And allthough me made no secret of it that he thought I am not as good a programmer as I might be a key account manager or consultant, he allways had a good word for my coding and my ideas. Some of which were better than his which he never denied. I introduced him to Linux, Python and OSS Webkits (he had like 20 years of Pascal & Delphi under his belt:-) ) and he was way ahead of me 6 months later.
The Project Manager I'm now working with as contract Lead Programmer is a 22 years old Media Designer Trainee. He's 16 years younger than me. In his spare time (nights and weekends) he's the founder, Project Lead and lead modeler of Star Wars - The New Era, a Half-Life 2 Total Conversion Mod that allready has raised some brows of Lucas Arts Execs. The man (boy?) is a fucking genius. He sucks at programming but that's not his job.... He actually *can* programm a few lines of PHP (also because I help him along) - but *everyone* should be able to do that in a PL of his choice - remember the C64 days? What an upside it is to know what computers were built for, no?... On it goes: He's at least as slow and detailed in his work and as easyly distracted as I am, but that's no problem. Because when he's moderating our talk with the Boss, explaining our custom CRM to end-customers, staying calm when I get all agitated over some issue or just plain doing the template/testing grunt-work it just feels great to have him around.
If I had 10 Million Euros to found the kind of IT company I have in mind, these two would be the first I'd call. They are more than 30 years apart. And I somehow can't shake the feeling they both would get along with each other wonderfully aswell.
Bottom line: Generation & gender issues are mostly hysteria. If you've got the right people it nearly matters squat what age they are, if they are a man or a woman, if they are a Granny/Grandpa or barely out of school. And if they are the right people, they all will get along perfectly. That's my experience anyway.
This submition is breaking new ground: Proprietary MS plattform lockin now combined with the crappyness of pointless fanboy analysis in the style of über-crappy layouted GNU Open Source web posts. Great.
No thanks people. I'm staying the heck away from MS,.Net, 'SilverShite' and whatnot. For anything. But especially for web stuff. And because nearly 20 years of very good reasons too.
There are a bazillion webkits out there, one better than the next and *all* of them open. (I just ran across haxe again the other day - yet another totally awesome OSS solution). No need to even waste a minute considering MS. Unless you're being paid tripple for your time, waste of brainpower and for learning stuff that corporations have no interest in keeping around for long, because they want to sell it again and again.
Take it from a professional web-developer: Stear clear. Jump on the Rails bandwagon if you must (only if you really must) but do yourself a favour and stay away from.Net.
I'm using PHP for my day-to-day work and deal a lot with Ruby fanboys, but I have to say that Python has a special place in my heart. Here are the upsides (and some things that make Python exceptional) in my book:
1.) Very much like PHP and Perl, Python lacks the academic stench and has a general overall non-challance and n00by friendlyness to it. Things that *really* bug me about C and Java. And a smell that Ruby is gaining due to all the Java people brining their old bad habbits over to ruby.
2.) It's elegant and has a very neat and clean syntax, lacking the bizar and intimidating curly braces and semi-colons strewn all about in classics such as Java or JS. Or PHP for that matter.
3.) Indentation as block delimiter. The most ridiculed thing about Python (ridiculed by people who've never used Python) is acutally one of it's neatest features. Keeps code clean, minimal, human-readably and it's style in sync across many developers. Great for collaboration. And let's not forget that famous Donald Knuth quote: "We will perhaps eventually be writing only small modules which are identified by name as they are used to build larger ones, so that devices like indentation, rather than delimiters, might become feasible for expressing local structure in the source language."... He said it best back in '74, nothing to add here.
4.) Python is used in serious non-trivial areas and applications in every field I can think of. Gaming, Multimedia/3D, Science, Large Scale HPC (Google f.i.), Embeded and, last but not least, sophisticated web applications. It apparently integrates very well as a scripting language, judging from the countless applications that use it as their choice of script and it also drives large non-trivial applications as core technology. (Googles Deployment Pipeline or, f.e. Blender)
5.) It's the foundation for the most sophisticated web kit to date: Zope. Zope is way ahead of anything in the Rails ballpark (or any other Web-FW), and it's only due to crappy project marketing on Zope's side that it didn't get as much attention in 2001 as Rails did since 2004. Until the MVC+SQL layering crowd catches up with Zope it will be another few years, until then it will remain the bar for any programmers who've ever come across it. (Like many PHP Framework & CMS developers I know)
6.) It's got a regular Webkit called 'Django' (drinking buddies of the Rails crew) which is quite popular and in itself makes me curious enough to want to pick up Python again.
Bottom line: If you're looking to learn a new PL, give Python a try. And even if you despise that indentation thing I recommend you try coding in it for 20 minutes. You'll notice that it doesn't bother you at all, since programmers who are experienced enough to worry about that indent correctly all the time anyway.
Astrology is a crutch to get you going - like Software Developement Methods. A few good friends of mine are Astrologers (one of them being an engineer at Siemens) and while their whole approach to it is *nothing* like what you read in magazines (Professional Astrologers know a *lot* about Astronomy for instance) I do percieve it as sort of a Semi-Science such as Software Developement Methods. They have something to them, but their relevance is rather shady. It boils down to what those involved make of it. Very much like religious lithurgy, art, psychoanalysis or search engine optimisation (to hint what I think of webdevs who offer that as a key feature).
Real Astrologers use the Ephemerides (in fact, it's Astrologer who invented them), the best, most percise Astronomy Tables Tool is developed by an Astrologist (http://www.astrolog.org/astrolog.htm), etc. etc. And while the discussion amoungst High-Profile Astrologists like 'wether the Ajanamsa Correction is the correct way of interpreting a Horoscope or not' might seem wacky to people who consider themselves 'scientific', the same goes for, let's say, discussions over wether Perl or Java is the best tool to programm in. Just ask an accountant listening to discussions like that of what he thinks about the relevance.
Some of the most resonably people I know of endorse or used to endorse Astrology (the real thing, with stacks of books and all) or other esotherics, and allthough I don't hold as much on Astrology as they do, they are the first I go to ask for advice when I'm stuck with a personal problem.
I used to use even more irrational ways of analysing people - by throwing runes. And of course I know how the runes fall has next to no meaning in itself - it's all about the way I learn to ignore that fact on command and open my mind when interpreting them in relation to the question I 'asked the runes'. That's what makes a good... lets call it 'Shaman', as opposed to - lets say - an illusionist.
Astrology, as much as anything else involving understanding the complex nature of humans and what makes them human, is a support. The actuall 'miracles' are performed by the people using it in the right manner. Which may, of course, vary from Astrologer to Astrologer.
My 2 Eurocents.
Gives a whole new meaning to Force-Feedback
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Hacking a Pacemaker
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· Score: 1
Imagine hooking up your pacemaker to your favorite FPS via bluetooth or something. Every time you get hit your heart misses a beat. Literally.
I can also just imagine installing Vista remotely onto the pacemakers of all those Windows fanboys....:-) Hehehe...
If I had 10 J2EE positions to fill and there'd be a low in supply I'd hire 2 experienced J2EE developers with basic social skills and 8 kids directly from High School who've done a little web project in the past or have neat World of Warcraft LUA scripting skills for like a tenth of the price.
I'd have the Experts help the n00bs wrap their head around that J2EE behemoth, buy them an entire library on Java, send the whole lot on 2 or 3 trainings over the first year and have them do or help at a handfull of projects (OSS or something) and test developement methodologies. I'd offer each a full-scale Sun Java Certification palette over the next 5 years or so for those who stay in line. Screw University and CompSci - who needs that nowadays? Training on the job is king. You don't think the Linux kernel would be worse if Linus didn't have a degree, do you? Ton Roosendahl (Eternal Blender Lead) doesn't even have a formal training in programming!
I'd give them air to breathe, all the tools the experts say speed up the job and in 18 months I'd have a team that could programm the universe. I'd slowly raise the n00bs into the positions that they are comfortable in, fire the slackers and get new n00bs on board. They'd all be a perfect fit and better than any hodge-podge crew that somebody tacks together from hiring a dozen of the 'best skilled developers'.
If you really have 10 positions for frontline J2EE developers to fill then you're a larger shop that could do this type of thing easyly. That you haven't done it yet goes to show how IT and Softwaredevelopement in general lacks result-oriented thinking and acting these days.
Or maybe you just wanted a team of rockstars that would gladly work for $8 an hour. Like most companies nowadays.
If I were into gaming full-scale I'd be using Windows. Unbelievable (I *hate* Microsoft & Windows), but then again I'm not a Gamer or Game Developer, I'm a developer. A guy I know is an avid gamer and the team lead of a Half-Life 2 Total Conversion Mod for StarWars. He - of course - uses Windows as his Desktop.
Another thing I'm seeing is that OSS gaming has just about lured in all the Linux gamers anyway. It's not *that* different in the Windows world. Counterstrike is still the most popular multiplayer out there - and that's a mod, not a commercial game.
I suspect once Linux gains critical mass due to HW prices plummeting and the ever gaining crowd of Ubuntu followers (a distro that finally did enough things right to foster critical mass) we'll at the same time see OSS gaming finally catch on. Linux is getting more and more interesting for the non-hardcore-lowlevel developers and thus we're seeing an ever growing set of OSS games, some of which could kill off entire gaming genres (check out the OSS RTS Spring to see what I mean).
It was 8 years ago when jBuilder, the prime Java IDE, would cost thousands and thousands of dollars. I can still clearly remember. Today we have huge companies competing with each other over who can give away the best software for free. Eclipse vs. Netbeans, Glassfish vs. jBoss, etc. We are seeing that with a lot of other stuff in the software area too. Webkits, Office packages, etc. Once that has crept out all over the place we'll see the same happening in gaming.
The games of the future will be plattforms payed for by a fee or premium accounts. Games will be free and mostly - so I suspect - open source. Because no one will even care.
This was mostly about cheap-ass asian style 'product piracy'. iPhone lookalikes with clear intent to be confused with the iPhone (right down to the packaging), 100% iPod shuffle ripp-offs and implementation of commercial MP3 decoders from companies who weren't paying the licencing fees to the Frauenhofer Institut.
The chinese ripping off IP is a big issue in Germany. They order a machine, dismantle it and copy it exactly, down to the last bolt and then sell cheap low-quality knock-offs of it back to Europe.
My cousin (engineer at Airbus) tells me there even is an Airbus 320 that went to China some time ago. That was it's only flight and it never appeared again. He suspects it's lying around somewhere dismantled and analysed.
"I am a programmer, I am your all mighty God, bow at me you simple mortals. I deserve all your admiration and respect". I always find it funny how codemonkeys think so much of themseleves.
If you read carefully - which you evidently haven't - you'll see I didn't mean any of that at all. Curiously enough, it's "code monkeys" (I presume you're refering to regular programmers as opposed to lead programmers) that need a functioning enviroment to make any sense of their type of work. If a project lead *and* a working enviroment aren't in place a "code monkey" is less that worthless.
When the questioneer says he had to replaces their one (!) developer and had a difficult time in doing so it goes to show that exactly that kind of enviroment isn't in place. An issue which I stressed in the parent reply allready. Which in turn goes to show that you a) didn't read or understand the the situation the questioner described and b) didn't really fathom my reply or actually know squat about what it refers to.
Which leads to the question of wether you are the kind of guy who has a little agency-type shop and hands out assignments to code to what he refers to as "code monkeys" (maybe simular to the one of the questioner, who knows?) or if you are just a poser. Given you style of reply and the simple fact that you posted it I suspect the latter. *Bingo!* , correct?... And there goes this lunch-breaks slashdot post.
This question plays into simular territory that one that came just a week ago. And, as you can tell from the subject, it really gets me going. If you are of the kind who posts questions on slashdot, then you at least are somewhat tech-savy enough to judge fairly quickly after talking to a handfull of developers if you're plattform is rubbish or not. Since you're not saying which plattform I suspect you rode with some standard fare OSS plattform (which are all very good for 99.9% of all web solutions) for free and expected to get the programmer along with it for $4 per hour or something like it.
You said you had to look hard to replace you guy ("It took us an extremely long time to find someone with the necessary skill set."). You, Sir, are a liar. Here's what really happend: You chose a plattform (... jadajada, Django, Rails, Zope, EZ Publish or even.Net it doesn't really matter for this part) and, so I strongly suspect, were paying your main "maid for everything" dev with a shoestring budget who then probalby left on his own when the farce became more than his self-respect could bare. You didn't train him on the technology, you didn't give him air to breathe, you didn't let him run his mind, you didn't space (not to speak of pay) the enviroment, pipeline and toolset needed for the product you wanted and you most certainly didn't plan *or* stick to your calls you made four weeks before. The usual stuff everybody with real developement experience here on slashdot has seen time and time again. (Watch them mod me way up to Jupiter to see what I mean)
I tell you what: Stuff this bullsh*t about 'lack of skillset'. I've heard it all many times over and I'm sick of it!
Pay and treat the people the fair and you'll have so many well-versed devs at you doorstep you'll have to shoo them away. And once you've got your favorite, show him/her your web-setup. If he's an OSS guy and you happend to jump on.Net because of some hair-brained idea back in the day, he'll tell you he can continue with that for an extra 20 000$ per year to compensate for learning a hermetic skill or you give him free reighn and he'll implement on whatever buzzword draws the highest line in OSS technologies on trends.google.com. Or he'll maybe just dive into the system you're running and come out on top after half a year.
Oh, and to drive the point home: If you're really lacking skillset and have a tough time finding it, I've got customers in the US too. I'm a freelance webdeveloper from Europe who also does consulting. Especially for the very sort of situations you claim to be in. Give me a neutral contact email-address here (post it in a child) and you'll get my contact data. Get back to me over your official channel and if we strike a deal and you afterwards can plausibly refer to this slashdot question as being your's I will apologize, stand corrected and you get 200 Euros off the bill. That's fair, isn't it?
And now I ask you, my fellow slashdotters: What's the bets we'll never hear from this guy again?
Torg, Gurps, Skyrealms of Jorune, Exalted, Runequest, Milleniums End, Harnmaster, Palladium, Everway, etc.... there are *tons* of RPGs out there that are cheaper, more in-depth, have better material, are more flexible, easyer to understand and better to handle than D&D.
To make an analogy to the IT world: I see D&D something like the SQL of RPGs. It's ancient, unwieldy, expensive, slow, unneccessary and really crappy by modern standards but for the reason of some undiscovered infinetly raging mass-psychosis people think of it as the prime example in it's field.
If you're planning on getting into RPG (again) please *do* check out the alternatives of which I listed some above. They deserve to be considered as a RPG gaming system.
Truth is: I've stopped looking for a job. The last interview I had a few years ago was promising for both sides. It was a classic example. Complex interactive Web Developement with Flash & PHP - which I have years of hands-on non-trivial project experience with. The guys were nice and even the boss interviewed me personally. They said they'd contact me in a week and I never heard of them again. Given, they were just building up and things were a tad chaotic, but their new website says they're still desperately looking for devs of that kind. Bullshit!
They didn't want experienced programmers. They wanted cheap, 5 Euro per hour students who fell for the idea of working on a cool project for factually zilch compensation. That's what it feels like all over the place. Confidentials are nothing but smoke and mirrors for competitors and investors ("Look here, we're growing fast!") and the bullshit companies put out into the open about the lack of experts - like the German autmotive builders right now whilst laying off thousands of people - isn't taken for granted by *anyone* anymore. Expert and normal postman alike.
I'm now a freelancer since 2003. It sucks to have to deal with the requirements of the German IRS, look out for the legal requirements, get into pissing contests with clients who don't want to pay and generally stay organised and watch out that you don't work for free or let billing slip just because the project is fun - because the next rent is allways around the corner. But it keeps me grounded and I actually have work to do. And AFAICT I'm not the only one in the field who ditched job-hunting for freelancing lately. Maybe you should look there. I'd actually go into employment again if the job is neat and interessting enough.
The bottom line is: If you are really looking for good programmers you'll find them. Just don't try to screw them over and pay a fair price and they will listen.
PHP-TAL is the same as Smarty just with a different syntax.
Wrong.
TAL (Template Attribute Language) stores it's signals in it's own tag attributes. Hence the name. This means you can build a template filled with mock-content that renders perfectly in any browser without the SSI enviroment and as soon as you integrate it into the templating layer the demo content is automatically replaced by the generated content. A feature pure PHP, JSP, ASP, whatnot code definitely can't provide.
That template processing - and thus TAL - comes with a performance price isn't news - in fact it's the second largest showstopper for templating in general. But apart from all other templating concepts, at least TAL isn't entirely pointless, as it actually adds non-existing functionality to your pipeline, where as Smarty, YATS, PatTemplate and whatnot just add yet another layer of allready existing functionality to a system using their own syntax. The classic 'Inner Plattform' Anti-Pattern.
I designed and built two open source LMS (BBALearn and Xical/XicalServ) between 2000 and 2004. They both have a relatively solid object model and thus - unbelievably so - do seperate from the user and his roles in the system. For instance, being a tutor and a scholar at the same time.
There must be countless examples of this, why didn't they claim prior art?
The concept is called templating and used to be called 'Server Side Includes' (somewhere around 1997 or so... ). ASP, JSP and PHP are originally SSI languages / templating languages. And if you want to use templating for your web developement - which is discussion worthy in itself - anything other that TAL (Pe(rl)-TAL, PHP-TAL or 'original'TAL is completely pointless, because the above mentioned languages are nothing but templating solutions in themselves. There is no point bolting another layer of that on top of them. Which is why I strongly dislike Smarty and it's ilk.
Oh, and I highly doubt that ASP has anything as neat and usefull as TAL. Do check out the OSS solutions, they're regarded as technology leaders in the field for a reason, which is one reason ASP & Co. are treated with suspicion.
Honestly, it should be 50000$. + Legal fees and maximum hourly rates for time wasted and some severence package for the stress on top.
This is what businesses need to get into their fricking head that it's a bad idea to get pissy with the small guy who is making a resonable claim that demands investigation. It would've taken them a few minutes research and a phonecall to settle the issue. They would've had the owner on their side in sueing the infringer into next wednesday and would've gotten a nice picture for a few hundred bucks and a mentioning on the corporate website or something.
Thanks for another example for that it makes sense to stand up for your rights if you know you are right, even if you're up agains a large legal entity.
Small Business ERP / Fulfilment isn't that hard ..
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Linux At the Point of Sale
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· Score: 3, Insightful
... but you have to follow some rules.
I've done a few small to medium business ERP setups based entirely on OSS. Point is: OSS or not isn't really the question, since you want openness, accessible Data and zero-fuss flexibility.
Small business systems actually are quite flaky - unless you're shop is using a well-designed vertical market system tailored for your shops needs. If that is the case I'd be carefull about attempting to 'improve' anything. Look at where the work is - like data migration and merging of data sources. That's enough work to start with and can have your boss notice that custom ERP can speed up the business. Measured by that regular closed-source bases small-business solutions can be exceptionally crappy beyond imagination. I've seen 15+ employee shops running on software so crappy you wouldn't even believe it.
For a portable barcode terminal running on OSS/Linux, AML should have you very much covered. That said, I'd personally recommend building the entire base system client-plattform independant, read: As an internal Web Solution with some small linux server tucked away somewhere and just using the PDA terminal for gathering..... Unless of course it's super-easy to get Python (or any other favourite PL of yours) and MySQL running on it. Which wouldn't suprise me given the advancements in IT and raw processing power. Even then you want a hot spare backup at any case.
If you plan well, the biggest trouble you'll have will be data-migration, syndication and integration, which actually is the fun part of ERP programming. Make sure that any client tools your boss is accustomed to use have zero-fuss in and outbound connectability, data-wise (CSV tables will do).
You want to plan your little project in such a way that it doesn't interfere with running business and that you and the people involved have time to test it. And you *do* want to test it thouroughly. If your boss discovers that your system has been omitting VAT and clipping it from the revenue at the end of a quarter, he'll have your ass and balls for breakfast. And for good reasons too.
Look into regular expressions and the powerfull data objects of the PL of your choice (Dictionaries in Python, Arrays in PHP and Hashes in Perl), they do wonders for this sort of job. I like to use OpenOffice for printing the bills - you can automate OOO within the CLI. I don't like the existing OSS ERP setups, because AFAICT they're more trouble than they are worth - I usually roll my own. You might want to do that too - maybe using some generic webkit or something (Zope, CakePHP, Django, Typo3, whatever...) .
You also want to know your way about object modelling and entity relationship modelling. Don't even try this sort of thing without understanding the basics of ERM(!!). If you and the people involved aren't aware of, let's say, the difference between a product and the booking of a purchase of a product then you'll be in deep shit half way into the project the latest.
And do see to it that you understand *ALL* relevant business processes involved before you run your mouth with your boss. Could be that he very much likes to do things by hand at night just to slip the one or other sale past the IRS or something like that. If you don't know the details and can't say for sure that automating this or that would really improve business without any downsides be carefull. You can even run the shop into the ground if you boss doesn't think either and believes your freshly bred ERP pipe-dreams.
Good luck.
50 Cents from a professional web-centric business process automator and consultant.:-)
Gimp is not at the same level as PS, so no, for quite a few people there is no alternative to PS. However, all the people I know - and I'm a Web & Design professional - would either a) do perfectly well with Gimp or b) don't use Linux as Desktop OS anyway. If this Google sponsoring really is true, it's completely pointless. Fact is: The current Gimp is quite close to PS. There is only a handfull of key features missing to rise to the same level and actually surpass it and Google would only have to sponsor a handfull of coding sprees to get those implemented. Higher bit-depths, solid CMYK, a protocol, a proper set of filters, layer effects and a bump-renderer that isn't total crap. And maybe a few more fileformats. It's not *that* much lacking in Gimp compared to PS.
I use PS for professional work (with PS filters & layer effects being it's last selling point over Gimp for me) but I actually find the newer Gimp interface much more intuitive and powerfull than the newer PS UIs. Since PS 5.5 - 7.0 it has become more and more difficult for Adobe to justify upgrades and it shows. AFAICT they're actually secretly *removing* functionality again to re-justify later upgrades. Google should spent a few hundred thousand $ on pushing Gimp past or up to PS. It would be a much better investment.
Slashdot Mirror
I had 10 years of performing arts under my belt before I became an IT pro back in 2000. I even was quite good at it. :-) ) due to them clashing their egos on a daily basis. The Arts School wont be half as boring than a pure tech campus, I can tell you that. Plus artists and tech-nerds actually have a lot in common.
:-)
I've been programming for 22 years but had a decade of Art inbetween. It's a great experience, and while it doesn't pay the bills as easy as IT, and I'm a little behind in hardcore coding compared to other Über-Geeks of my generation, it provides an skillset that I wouldn't want to miss.
Artist are nice people and the performers have superiour social skills (good and bad
Oh, and the girls are cute.
Go for the campus leaning towards arts, but *do* see to it that you get internships and sidejobs that involve you requireing to dive into whatever field of IT you want to make your income in later in your life. Occasions for that might even be more numerous than a tech-oriented campus.
I still consider the ultimate classic 'P-P-P-Powerbook' to be the prime example of creative internet community vigilantisim. Allways a funny read indeed.
The Asus EEE in book has a Killer Combination of features I've last seen about 13 years ago with the Highscreen "DOS 5.0 / Works 5.0 on ROM" Pocket PC (which basically was a cheap rebranding of an earlyer expensive Sharp Pocket PC). These features are:
+ Small.
+ Durable.
+ Full PC - runs all PC stuff I need.
+ Sacrafices Optical for durability, size and price == good move - I don't want to watch DVDs on a small thing like that anyway. I *do* however, want to use OpenOffice in a pinch.
+ No extra custom gadget connectivity stuff needed. Supports all standard ports out of the box. Means: Ready for universal flexible use. Cheap.
+ No obscure custom purpose 'Pocket OS'. Linux beats Palm OS any time of the day.
+ Linux preinstalled, Debian Variant being a big bonus. I'm a programmer and an IT pro. I want to use a Computer, not a pimped out virii-ridden slowpocking typewriter that needs DirectX to render it's desktop.
Now only if I could get one. These things are hard to come by right now.
Analyst finally admits to herd of elefants in the room.
Film at eleven.
The CCC is one of the things I like about Germany. It highlights a major element of german-style citizen-culture. It's clearly opposed to uncontrolled gouverment and any notion of a police-state. It has a taste of anarchy to it and on its fringes it has inofficial members with ties to the black-hat community. Yet it is a well organised official registered German association that speaks up on behalf of the people and democracy. With a 27-year tradition of keeping the public political debate alive on IT related rights-issues by perpetually coming up with creative ways of gaining attention. This recent 'Schäuble-Fingerprint' stunt being one of them. I don't know if they've exposed their selves with legal liability by doing this (after all it was officially published in their magazine 'Datenschleuder') but it sure is as funny, hilarious and exposing as ever. Creative non-sense at its best. Go, CCC!
I don't hate MS per se. I hate their monopoly and all that comes with it. For instance: End users, customers and partners following every wim of MS blindly.
That is a big fault and it needs to be attacked perpetually at all times with as much force as possible until the monopoly falters. Until then MS is our prime target. I don't trust Apple (or any other corp) any further than MS, but Apple doesn't have a monopoly and thus are forced to act smart and resonable at times. Which actually caused Apple to choose a Unix variant as their OS. That combined with the neat hard- & software integration is what made me an Apple customer with that G4 iBook and my recent purchase of the 'smaller' MacMini (both cheapest of it's class, regardless being an Apple).
If Apple as much as twitches in the wrong direction and attempts to lock me in I'll gladly be back to regular Linux on a regulare PC, Laptop (or my MacMini). As with all other opinion-leaders and experts in the industry I've been in the business to long to be paranoid enough about lock-in and greedy IT corps. As far as I can tell it's the same with most professionals I deal with.
WildTangent actually gained some attention back in 2001, when the offered a web 3D plugin and a dev-enviroment that didn't cost a bazillion dollars. They let their heels drag, only kept offering their plattform for Windows and basically ignored any opinion-leaders in multimedia or VM-based gaming & 3D. WildTangent today is next to insignificant and their 'Orb' VM console (which afaict only runs on MS OSes) is nothing but a pimped WildTangent Plugin/Player and won't gain any traction beyond some niche group who wants to play a console game on the PC. For whatever reasons there may be.
Bottom line: Nothing to see here, move along.
My Senior in the last company I worked for is around about 55 right now. He's one of the best programmers I've every worked with. Humorous, patient, respectfull to me (ca. 15 years younger, his subordinate), allways helpfull and an absolute wizbang when it comes to picking up new technology. And allthough me made no secret of it that he thought I am not as good a programmer as I might be a key account manager or consultant, he allways had a good word for my coding and my ideas. Some of which were better than his which he never denied. I introduced him to Linux, Python and OSS Webkits (he had like 20 years of Pascal & Delphi under his belt :-) ) and he was way ahead of me 6 months later.
... He actually *can* programm a few lines of PHP (also because I help him along) - but *everyone* should be able to do that in a PL of his choice - remember the C64 days? What an upside it is to know what computers were built for, no? ... On it goes: He's at least as slow and detailed in his work and as easyly distracted as I am, but that's no problem. Because when he's moderating our talk with the Boss, explaining our custom CRM to end-customers, staying calm when I get all agitated over some issue or just plain doing the template/testing grunt-work it just feels great to have him around.
The Project Manager I'm now working with as contract Lead Programmer is a 22 years old Media Designer Trainee. He's 16 years younger than me. In his spare time (nights and weekends) he's the founder, Project Lead and lead modeler of Star Wars - The New Era, a Half-Life 2 Total Conversion Mod that allready has raised some brows of Lucas Arts Execs. The man (boy?) is a fucking genius. He sucks at programming but that's not his job.
If I had 10 Million Euros to found the kind of IT company I have in mind, these two would be the first I'd call. They are more than 30 years apart. And I somehow can't shake the feeling they both would get along with each other wonderfully aswell.
Bottom line: Generation & gender issues are mostly hysteria. If you've got the right people it nearly matters squat what age they are, if they are a man or a woman, if they are a Granny/Grandpa or barely out of school. And if they are the right people, they all will get along perfectly. That's my experience anyway.
This submition is breaking new ground: Proprietary MS plattform lockin now combined with the crappyness of pointless fanboy analysis in the style of über-crappy layouted GNU Open Source web posts. Great.
.Net, 'SilverShite' and whatnot. For anything. But especially for web stuff. And because nearly 20 years of very good reasons too.
.Net.
No thanks people. I'm staying the heck away from MS,
There are a bazillion webkits out there, one better than the next and *all* of them open. (I just ran across haxe again the other day - yet another totally awesome OSS solution). No need to even waste a minute considering MS. Unless you're being paid tripple for your time, waste of brainpower and for learning stuff that corporations have no interest in keeping around for long, because they want to sell it again and again.
Take it from a professional web-developer: Stear clear. Jump on the Rails bandwagon if you must (only if you really must) but do yourself a favour and stay away from
My 2 cents.
I'm using PHP for my day-to-day work and deal a lot with Ruby fanboys, but I have to say that Python has a special place in my heart.
... He said it best back in '74, nothing to add here.
Here are the upsides (and some things that make Python exceptional) in my book:
1.) Very much like PHP and Perl, Python lacks the academic stench and has a general overall non-challance and n00by friendlyness to it. Things that *really* bug me about C and Java. And a smell that Ruby is gaining due to all the Java people brining their old bad habbits over to ruby.
2.) It's elegant and has a very neat and clean syntax, lacking the bizar and intimidating curly braces and semi-colons strewn all about in classics such as Java or JS. Or PHP for that matter.
3.) Indentation as block delimiter. The most ridiculed thing about Python (ridiculed by people who've never used Python) is acutally one of it's neatest features. Keeps code clean, minimal, human-readably and it's style in sync across many developers. Great for collaboration. And let's not forget that famous Donald Knuth quote: "We will perhaps eventually be writing only small modules which are identified by name as they are used to build larger ones, so that devices like indentation, rather than delimiters, might become feasible for expressing local structure in the source language."
4.) Python is used in serious non-trivial areas and applications in every field I can think of. Gaming, Multimedia/3D, Science, Large Scale HPC (Google f.i.), Embeded and, last but not least, sophisticated web applications. It apparently integrates very well as a scripting language, judging from the countless applications that use it as their choice of script and it also drives large non-trivial applications as core technology. (Googles Deployment Pipeline or, f.e. Blender)
5.) It's the foundation for the most sophisticated web kit to date: Zope. Zope is way ahead of anything in the Rails ballpark (or any other Web-FW), and it's only due to crappy project marketing on Zope's side that it didn't get as much attention in 2001 as Rails did since 2004. Until the MVC+SQL layering crowd catches up with Zope it will be another few years, until then it will remain the bar for any programmers who've ever come across it. (Like many PHP Framework & CMS developers I know)
6.) It's got a regular Webkit called 'Django' (drinking buddies of the Rails crew) which is quite popular and in itself makes me curious enough to want to pick up Python again.
Bottom line:
If you're looking to learn a new PL, give Python a try. And even if you despise that indentation thing I recommend you try coding in it for 20 minutes. You'll notice that it doesn't bother you at all, since programmers who are experienced enough to worry about that indent correctly all the time anyway.
Astrology is a crutch to get you going - like Software Developement Methods. A few good friends of mine are Astrologers (one of them being an engineer at Siemens) and while their whole approach to it is *nothing* like what you read in magazines (Professional Astrologers know a *lot* about Astronomy for instance) I do percieve it as sort of a Semi-Science such as Software Developement Methods. They have something to them, but their relevance is rather shady. It boils down to what those involved make of it. Very much like religious lithurgy, art, psychoanalysis or search engine optimisation (to hint what I think of webdevs who offer that as a key feature).
... lets call it 'Shaman', as opposed to - lets say - an illusionist.
Real Astrologers use the Ephemerides (in fact, it's Astrologer who invented them), the best, most percise Astronomy Tables Tool is developed by an Astrologist (http://www.astrolog.org/astrolog.htm), etc. etc. And while the discussion amoungst High-Profile Astrologists like 'wether the Ajanamsa Correction is the correct way of interpreting a Horoscope or not' might seem wacky to people who consider themselves 'scientific', the same goes for, let's say, discussions over wether Perl or Java is the best tool to programm in. Just ask an accountant listening to discussions like that of what he thinks about the relevance.
Some of the most resonably people I know of endorse or used to endorse Astrology (the real thing, with stacks of books and all) or other esotherics, and allthough I don't hold as much on Astrology as they do, they are the first I go to ask for advice when I'm stuck with a personal problem.
I used to use even more irrational ways of analysing people - by throwing runes. And of course I know how the runes fall has next to no meaning in itself - it's all about the way I learn to ignore that fact on command and open my mind when interpreting them in relation to the question I 'asked the runes'. That's what makes a good
Astrology, as much as anything else involving understanding the complex nature of humans and what makes them human, is a support. The actuall 'miracles' are performed by the people using it in the right manner. Which may, of course, vary from Astrologer to Astrologer.
My 2 Eurocents.
Imagine hooking up your pacemaker to your favorite FPS via bluetooth or something. Every time you get hit your heart misses a beat. Literally.
... :-) Hehehe ...
I can also just imagine installing Vista remotely onto the pacemakers of all those Windows fanboys.
Maybe that's the problem. Your problem.
If I had 10 J2EE positions to fill and there'd be a low in supply I'd hire 2 experienced J2EE developers with basic social skills and 8 kids directly from High School who've done a little web project in the past or have neat World of Warcraft LUA scripting skills for like a tenth of the price.
I'd have the Experts help the n00bs wrap their head around that J2EE behemoth, buy them an entire library on Java, send the whole lot on 2 or 3 trainings over the first year and have them do or help at a handfull of projects (OSS or something) and test developement methodologies. I'd offer each a full-scale Sun Java Certification palette over the next 5 years or so for those who stay in line. Screw University and CompSci - who needs that nowadays? Training on the job is king. You don't think the Linux kernel would be worse if Linus didn't have a degree, do you? Ton Roosendahl (Eternal Blender Lead) doesn't even have a formal training in programming!
I'd give them air to breathe, all the tools the experts say speed up the job and in 18 months I'd have a team that could programm the universe. I'd slowly raise the n00bs into the positions that they are comfortable in, fire the slackers and get new n00bs on board. They'd all be a perfect fit and better than any hodge-podge crew that somebody tacks together from hiring a dozen of the 'best skilled developers'.
If you really have 10 positions for frontline J2EE developers to fill then you're a larger shop that could do this type of thing easyly. That you haven't done it yet goes to show how IT and Softwaredevelopement in general lacks result-oriented thinking and acting these days.
Or maybe you just wanted a team of rockstars that would gladly work for $8 an hour. Like most companies nowadays.
It's that simple really.
If I were into gaming full-scale I'd be using Windows. Unbelievable (I *hate* Microsoft & Windows), but then again I'm not a Gamer or Game Developer, I'm a developer. A guy I know is an avid gamer and the team lead of a Half-Life 2 Total Conversion Mod for StarWars. He - of course - uses Windows as his Desktop.
Another thing I'm seeing is that OSS gaming has just about lured in all the Linux gamers anyway. It's not *that* different in the Windows world. Counterstrike is still the most popular multiplayer out there - and that's a mod, not a commercial game.
I suspect once Linux gains critical mass due to HW prices plummeting and the ever gaining crowd of Ubuntu followers (a distro that finally did enough things right to foster critical mass) we'll at the same time see OSS gaming finally catch on. Linux is getting more and more interesting for the non-hardcore-lowlevel developers and thus we're seeing an ever growing set of OSS games, some of which could kill off entire gaming genres (check out the OSS RTS Spring to see what I mean).
It was 8 years ago when jBuilder, the prime Java IDE, would cost thousands and thousands of dollars. I can still clearly remember. Today we have huge companies competing with each other over who can give away the best software for free. Eclipse vs. Netbeans, Glassfish vs. jBoss, etc. We are seeing that with a lot of other stuff in the software area too. Webkits, Office packages, etc. Once that has crept out all over the place we'll see the same happening in gaming.
The games of the future will be plattforms payed for by a fee or premium accounts. Games will be free and mostly - so I suspect - open source. Because no one will even care.
This was mostly about cheap-ass asian style 'product piracy'. iPhone lookalikes with clear intent to be confused with the iPhone (right down to the packaging), 100% iPod shuffle ripp-offs and implementation of commercial MP3 decoders from companies who weren't paying the licencing fees to the Frauenhofer Institut.
The chinese ripping off IP is a big issue in Germany. They order a machine, dismantle it and copy it exactly, down to the last bolt and then sell cheap low-quality knock-offs of it back to Europe.
My cousin (engineer at Airbus) tells me there even is an Airbus 320 that went to China some time ago. That was it's only flight and it never appeared again. He suspects it's lying around somewhere dismantled and analysed.
Let me summarize what the GP post meant:
... And there goes this lunch-breaks slashdot post.
"I am a programmer, I am your all mighty God, bow at me you simple mortals. I deserve all your admiration and respect".
I always find it funny how codemonkeys think so much of themseleves.
If you read carefully - which you evidently haven't - you'll see I didn't mean any of that at all. Curiously enough, it's "code monkeys" (I presume you're refering to regular programmers as opposed to lead programmers) that need a functioning enviroment to make any sense of their type of work. If a project lead *and* a working enviroment aren't in place a "code monkey" is less that worthless.
When the questioneer says he had to replaces their one (!) developer and had a difficult time in doing so it goes to show that exactly that kind of enviroment isn't in place. An issue which I stressed in the parent reply allready. Which in turn goes to show that you a) didn't read or understand the the situation the questioner described and b) didn't really fathom my reply or actually know squat about what it refers to.
Which leads to the question of wether you are the kind of guy who has a little agency-type shop and hands out assignments to code to what he refers to as "code monkeys" (maybe simular to the one of the questioner, who knows?) or if you are just a poser. Given you style of reply and the simple fact that you posted it I suspect the latter. *Bingo!* , correct?
This question plays into simular territory that one that came just a week ago. And, as you can tell from the subject, it really gets me going. If you are of the kind who posts questions on slashdot, then you at least are somewhat tech-savy enough to judge fairly quickly after talking to a handfull of developers if you're plattform is rubbish or not.
.Net it doesn't really matter for this part) and, so I strongly suspect, were paying your main "maid for everything" dev with a shoestring budget who then probalby left on his own when the farce became more than his self-respect could bare. You didn't train him on the technology, you didn't give him air to breathe, you didn't let him run his mind, you didn't space (not to speak of pay) the enviroment, pipeline and toolset needed for the product you wanted and you most certainly didn't plan *or* stick to your calls you made four weeks before. The usual stuff everybody with real developement experience here on slashdot has seen time and time again. (Watch them mod me way up to Jupiter to see what I mean)
.Net because of some hair-brained idea back in the day, he'll tell you he can continue with that for an extra 20 000$ per year to compensate for learning a hermetic skill or you give him free reighn and he'll implement on whatever buzzword draws the highest line in OSS technologies on trends.google.com. Or he'll maybe just dive into the system you're running and come out on top after half a year.
Since you're not saying which plattform I suspect you rode with some standard fare OSS plattform (which are all very good for 99.9% of all web solutions) for free and expected to get the programmer along with it for $4 per hour or something like it.
You said you had to look hard to replace you guy ("It took us an extremely long time to find someone with the necessary skill set."). You, Sir, are a liar. Here's what really happend: You chose a plattform (... jadajada, Django, Rails, Zope, EZ Publish or even
I tell you what: Stuff this bullsh*t about 'lack of skillset'. I've heard it all many times over and I'm sick of it!
Pay and treat the people the fair and you'll have so many well-versed devs at you doorstep you'll have to shoo them away. And once you've got your favorite, show him/her your web-setup. If he's an OSS guy and you happend to jump on
Oh, and to drive the point home:
If you're really lacking skillset and have a tough time finding it, I've got customers in the US too. I'm a freelance webdeveloper from Europe who also does consulting. Especially for the very sort of situations you claim to be in. Give me a neutral contact email-address here (post it in a child) and you'll get my contact data. Get back to me over your official channel and if we strike a deal and you afterwards can plausibly refer to this slashdot question as being your's I will apologize, stand corrected and you get 200 Euros off the bill. That's fair, isn't it?
And now I ask you, my fellow slashdotters:
What's the bets we'll never hear from this guy again?
Torg, Gurps, Skyrealms of Jorune, Exalted, Runequest, Milleniums End, Harnmaster, Palladium, Everway, etc. ... there are *tons* of RPGs out there that are cheaper, more in-depth, have better material, are more flexible, easyer to understand and better to handle than D&D.
To make an analogy to the IT world: I see D&D something like the SQL of RPGs. It's ancient, unwieldy, expensive, slow, unneccessary and really crappy by modern standards but for the reason of some undiscovered infinetly raging mass-psychosis people think of it as the prime example in it's field.
If you're planning on getting into RPG (again) please *do* check out the alternatives of which I listed some above. They deserve to be considered as a RPG gaming system.
The answer is easy: Look for them.
Truth is: I've stopped looking for a job. The last interview I had a few years ago was promising for both sides. It was a classic example. Complex interactive Web Developement with Flash & PHP - which I have years of hands-on non-trivial project experience with. The guys were nice and even the boss interviewed me personally. They said they'd contact me in a week and I never heard of them again. Given, they were just building up and things were a tad chaotic, but their new website says they're still desperately looking for devs of that kind. Bullshit!
They didn't want experienced programmers. They wanted cheap, 5 Euro per hour students who fell for the idea of working on a cool project for factually zilch compensation. That's what it feels like all over the place. Confidentials are nothing but smoke and mirrors for competitors and investors ("Look here, we're growing fast!") and the bullshit companies put out into the open about the lack of experts - like the German autmotive builders right now whilst laying off thousands of people - isn't taken for granted by *anyone* anymore. Expert and normal postman alike.
I'm now a freelancer since 2003. It sucks to have to deal with the requirements of the German IRS, look out for the legal requirements, get into pissing contests with clients who don't want to pay and generally stay organised and watch out that you don't work for free or let billing slip just because the project is fun - because the next rent is allways around the corner. But it keeps me grounded and I actually have work to do. And AFAICT I'm not the only one in the field who ditched job-hunting for freelancing lately. Maybe you should look there. I'd actually go into employment again if the job is neat and interessting enough.
The bottom line is: If you are really looking for good programmers you'll find them. Just don't try to screw them over and pay a fair price and they will listen.
PHP-TAL is the same as Smarty just with a different syntax.
Wrong.
TAL (Template Attribute Language) stores it's signals in it's own tag attributes. Hence the name. This means you can build a template filled with mock-content that renders perfectly in any browser without the SSI enviroment and as soon as you integrate it into the templating layer the demo content is automatically replaced by the generated content. A feature pure PHP, JSP, ASP, whatnot code definitely can't provide.
That template processing - and thus TAL - comes with a performance price isn't news - in fact it's the second largest showstopper for templating in general. But apart from all other templating concepts, at least TAL isn't entirely pointless, as it actually adds non-existing functionality to your pipeline, where as Smarty, YATS, PatTemplate and whatnot just add yet another layer of allready existing functionality to a system using their own syntax. The classic 'Inner Plattform' Anti-Pattern.
I designed and built two open source LMS (BBALearn and Xical/XicalServ) between 2000 and 2004. They both have a relatively solid object model and thus - unbelievably so - do seperate from the user and his roles in the system. For instance, being a tutor and a scholar at the same time.
There must be countless examples of this, why didn't they claim prior art?
The concept is called templating and used to be called 'Server Side Includes' (somewhere around 1997 or so ... ). ASP, JSP and PHP are originally SSI languages / templating languages.
And if you want to use templating for your web developement - which is discussion worthy in itself - anything other that TAL (Pe(rl)-TAL, PHP-TAL or 'original' TAL is completely pointless, because the above mentioned languages are nothing but templating solutions in themselves. There is no point bolting another layer of that on top of them. Which is why I strongly dislike Smarty and it's ilk.
Oh, and I highly doubt that ASP has anything as neat and usefull as TAL. Do check out the OSS solutions, they're regarded as technology leaders in the field for a reason, which is one reason ASP & Co. are treated with suspicion.
Honestly, it should be 50000$. + Legal fees and maximum hourly rates for time wasted and some severence package for the stress on top.
This is what businesses need to get into their fricking head that it's a bad idea to get pissy with the small guy who is making a resonable claim that demands investigation. It would've taken them a few minutes research and a phonecall to settle the issue. They would've had the owner on their side in sueing the infringer into next wednesday and would've gotten a nice picture for a few hundred bucks and a mentioning on the corporate website or something.
Thanks for another example for that it makes sense to stand up for your rights if you know you are right, even if you're up agains a large legal entity.
... but you have to follow some rules.
.... Unless of course it's super-easy to get Python (or any other favourite PL of yours) and MySQL running on it. Which wouldn't suprise me given the advancements in IT and raw processing power. Even then you want a hot spare backup at any case.
...) .
:-)
I've done a few small to medium business ERP setups based entirely on OSS. Point is: OSS or not isn't really the question, since you want openness, accessible Data and zero-fuss flexibility.
Small business systems actually are quite flaky - unless you're shop is using a well-designed vertical market system tailored for your shops needs. If that is the case I'd be carefull about attempting to 'improve' anything. Look at where the work is - like data migration and merging of data sources. That's enough work to start with and can have your boss notice that custom ERP can speed up the business. Measured by that regular closed-source bases small-business solutions can be exceptionally crappy beyond imagination. I've seen 15+ employee shops running on software so crappy you wouldn't even believe it.
For a portable barcode terminal running on OSS/Linux, AML should have you very much covered. That said, I'd personally recommend building the entire base system client-plattform independant, read: As an internal Web Solution with some small linux server tucked away somewhere and just using the PDA terminal for gathering.
If you plan well, the biggest trouble you'll have will be data-migration, syndication and integration, which actually is the fun part of ERP programming. Make sure that any client tools your boss is accustomed to use have zero-fuss in and outbound connectability, data-wise (CSV tables will do).
You want to plan your little project in such a way that it doesn't interfere with running business and that you and the people involved have time to test it. And you *do* want to test it thouroughly. If your boss discovers that your system has been omitting VAT and clipping it from the revenue at the end of a quarter, he'll have your ass and balls for breakfast. And for good reasons too.
Look into regular expressions and the powerfull data objects of the PL of your choice (Dictionaries in Python, Arrays in PHP and Hashes in Perl), they do wonders for this sort of job. I like to use OpenOffice for printing the bills - you can automate OOO within the CLI. I don't like the existing OSS ERP setups, because AFAICT they're more trouble than they are worth - I usually roll my own. You might want to do that too - maybe using some generic webkit or something (Zope, CakePHP, Django, Typo3, whatever
You also want to know your way about object modelling and entity relationship modelling. Don't even try this sort of thing without understanding the basics of ERM(!!). If you and the people involved aren't aware of, let's say, the difference between a product and the booking of a purchase of a product then you'll be in deep shit half way into the project the latest.
And do see to it that you understand *ALL* relevant business processes involved before you run your mouth with your boss. Could be that he very much likes to do things by hand at night just to slip the one or other sale past the IRS or something like that. If you don't know the details and can't say for sure that automating this or that would really improve business without any downsides be carefull. You can even run the shop into the ground if you boss doesn't think either and believes your freshly bred ERP pipe-dreams.
Good luck.
50 Cents from a professional web-centric business process automator and consultant.
Gimp is not at the same level as PS, so no, for quite a few people there is no alternative to PS. However, all the people I know - and I'm a Web & Design professional - would either a) do perfectly well with Gimp or b) don't use Linux as Desktop OS anyway. If this Google sponsoring really is true, it's completely pointless. Fact is: The current Gimp is quite close to PS. There is only a handfull of key features missing to rise to the same level and actually surpass it and Google would only have to sponsor a handfull of coding sprees to get those implemented. Higher bit-depths, solid CMYK, a protocol, a proper set of filters, layer effects and a bump-renderer that isn't total crap. And maybe a few more fileformats. It's not *that* much lacking in Gimp compared to PS.
I use PS for professional work (with PS filters & layer effects being it's last selling point over Gimp for me) but I actually find the newer Gimp interface much more intuitive and powerfull than the newer PS UIs. Since PS 5.5 - 7.0 it has become more and more difficult for Adobe to justify upgrades and it shows. AFAICT they're actually secretly *removing* functionality again to re-justify later upgrades. Google should spent a few hundred thousand $ on pushing Gimp past or up to PS. It would be a much better investment.
My 2 cents.